Repeat freebie from last February: The Monster Within Idea by R. Thomas Riley. Originally published by Apex in 2009.

Quote:

The monsters lurk in everyone: monsters of greed, of guilt, of the pleasure found in pain, of the pain found when pleasure dies. Carefully disguised, the monsters can sit down beside you or take up residence within you at the slightest twist of fate. Will you try to stop them? Will you want to?

This collection of 18 stories from R. Thomas Riley deftly explores the monsters born of the human mind. “Attrition” offers a future prison system that frees only those who repent sincerely—but what can an inmate do if he finds that sincerity is not really the key? “Twin Thieves” and “Tautology” throw a devilish spin on relationships gone wrong, while “The Lesser Evil” twists the abuses of race and power into a gritty, noirish nightmare of the choices a man must make to protect a lesser man and a greater good. In “Touching God,” a young man’s past catches up to him when worlds bleed into each other and the past crosses into present, bringing back the abuse he once escaped and the brother who wasn’t so lucky.

Sacrifice, selfishness, and the worst of good intentions: all combine in The Monster Within Idea. From vampires and aliens to hit women and Wild Bill Hickock, Riley gives a subtle psychological turn to dark science fiction and horror. Let the monsters walk the paths of your mind. The idea is already within.

In the 16th century a few hundred Spanish Conquistadors, led by the great Francisco Pizarro, landed on the shores of the Incan Empire in search of gold. Just a few months later the mightiest realm in the world lies in ruins, its once beautiful cities destroyed and its citizens butchered. Greed and lies, betrayal and vengeance mix with the black magic of the High Priests to set free an ancient evil from the underworld. As these lands descend into a deadly chaos an uneasy alliance is formed between the last of the Spanish soldiers and the Incan warriors, led by Minco, the Protector of the capital city Cuzco. Setting aside their well earned mistrust and hatred, together they must venture deep into the jungle to find the Forbidden City, to strike at the very heart of evil itself, the Pyramid of the Dead.

Another story inspired by The Nightrunners.
In the book there's a scene where one of my characters sees the house where he is soon to live for the first time, and I gave a sort of over-the-top description of it that I thought worked quite well in context, but there was something in that description that spurred me to consider the house from another angle, a less grim one. What came out was this short story. It's a gonzo hoot with an echo of Bradbury and a lot of tongue in cheek.
My title was "Something Lumber This Way Comes," which my friend Bill Nolan, to put it mildly, hated. He suggested this title. Since I used the other title on a variation of this story which became a children's book [published by Subterranean Press], I agreed. Secretly, I still prefer the original title.

Working from Dante’s Inferno to draw out the reality behind the fantasy, author Kim Paffenroth unfolds the horrifying true events that led Dante to fictionalize the account of his lost years…

For seventeen years of his life, the exact whereabouts of the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri are unknown to modern scholars. It is known that during this time he traveled as an exile across Europe, working on his epic poem, The Divine Comedy. In his masterpiece he describes a journey through the three realms of the afterlife. The most famous of its three volumes, Inferno, describes hell.

During his lost wanderings, Dante stumbled upon an infestation of the living dead. The unspeakable acts he witnessed —cannibalism, live burnings, evisceration, crucifixion, and dozens more—became the basis of all the horrors described in Inferno. Afraid to be labeled a madman, Dante made the terrors he experienced into a more “believable” account of an otherworldly adventure filled with demons and mythological monsters.

The Library Journal description is wrong, apparently from a different book, so here's one from Fiction Database:

Quote:

They were children then, in that magical summer so long ago when Robert, Carrie-Anne, and Jason first met Gina. It was a summer of fun, of friendship, and of discoveries--including the discovery of Gina's strange abilities. But it all ended in a moment of madness and blood.

Now, twenty years later, Robert is still haunted by nightmares of that time. He has returned to his small hometown to confront his past and reclaim his life, but his homecoming is far from happy. Gina moved away long ago. Jason is bitter and resentful. And Carrie-Anne is about to commit an act that will horrify them all. Something unexplainable has infected the town. Could the secret lie in the past, in Gina's old house, abandoned long ago but never quite empty?